Tropical forests continued to disappear at a "stubbornly" high rate last year, putting the global goal of ending deforestation "far away" by 2030, new research shows. According to an analysis by Global Forest Watch, the equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical rainforest – 3.7 million hectares – will be lost every minute in 2023 due to human activity and natural disasters.

While deforestation slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, it was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

"The world took two steps forward, two steps back in terms of forest loss last year," said Mikaela Weisse, director of Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute (WRI). (Matteo Civillini, more at climatechangenews.com)

Young people, including college and university students, are bombarded with bad news about the world they will inherit. Vital fields such as ecology and environmental science paint a picture of the planet's natural and physical systems under stress, and the negative impacts of climate change are becoming more widespread, more frequent and undeniable.

Globally, the energy sector – particularly the penchant for burning fossil fuels to produce heat and electricity – is the largest contributor to climate-changing emissions. In the United States, the transportation sector dominates the energy sector in terms of total emissions, but not by much. It's no surprise that many young people are suffering from climate anxiety and are struggling to find hope for the future. (Darrin Magee, more at seattletimes.com)

Newly adopted rules by the Commission for securities and stock exchange they can have a transformative impact on climate disclosures by public companies and public offerings.

SEC Climate Disclosure Rules seek to improve and standardize disclosure and represent a significant revision of existing disclosure requirements and expand reporting obligations for public companies. While parts of the rules have been scaled back compared to previous drafts, public companies are required to disclose, among other things:

• Material climate-related risks and actions to mitigate or adapt to such risks
• Information on their board's oversight of climate risks and management's role in managing material climate risks
• Information about any climate-related goals or objectives that are material to their business, results of operations or financial condition

(More on aem.org)

Global warming is getting more drastic every year. As part of Earth Month, National Geographic looks at how climate change is changing our planet – and shows what we humans have to do with it. In the far north, Greenland's glaciers are melting, the world's largest lakes are losing water, and forest fires are now commonplace in European summers – even in Germany. The earth has been visibly changing for decades and has been changing more and more rapidly in recent years. Global climate change is to blame – and so are we humans.

We are here because we live in a very special time. As we all know, climate change is progressing. We just have to look out the window. I was in Athens yesterday; it was over 30 degrees Celsius at the beginning of April. They say it's fine for July, but not for early April. And that's the easier side to bear, because the reaction to sunshine is always, 'Oh, nice weather today.' However, we also know that with advancing climate change, we have extreme weather fluctuations, we have droughts, floods and fires. So we know we are in a race against time. On the other hand, we also know that we have the tools to mitigate climate change. And one of the tools is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And we know that transport accounts for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions here in the European Union. So our joint task is: If we want to mitigate risks, if we want to stick to our goals, we must work to speed up cleaner transport. And I know you are all committed to that goal. So I want to praise and thank you very much. (More on ec.europa.eu)

Children and youth are vulnerable to the threat of climate change, but potential non-health impacts, such as impacts on global education outcomes, are not well understood. In this interdisciplinary review, we synthesize research linking climate change stressors to children's educational outcomes. We found that climate change is already likely to undermine the educational outcomes of many populations around the world through multiple direct and indirect pathways. We suggest that a life-cycle developmental framework is well suited to understanding these effects, particularly how climate risks can accumulate over the life course. We further show that existing vulnerabilities moderate the relationship between climate stressors and adverse educational outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of current methodological challenges and outline future research directions. (Caitlin M. Prentice , Francis Vergunst , Helen L. Berry , more at nature.com)

The high temperatures in recent months have baffled meteorologists. Not only are they significantly above the average of the usual values, but there is no end in sight. On the contrary – this summer could bring another extremely warm weather and several records could fall.

January, February and March - all three past months of this year broke temperature records. And as it seems, the others will be in a similar spirit. According to meteorologist Dagmar Honsová, we are in for a very hot summer.

"We will probably not avoid heat waves this year either. But we are already used to hot years in recent years. However, seasonal weather forecasts issued by major world centers already calculate positive temperature deviations for Europe's average and summer weather," the meteorologist explained. (More on tn.nova.cz)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently become an issue in the urgent international effort to address climate change. As AI plays a bigger role in our lives, it will need massive amounts of computing power and data storage. AI's carbon footprint is expected to expand due to the high energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with hardware manufacturing.

However, the truth is more subtle, as artificial intelligence could also be a solution to problems and significantly contribute to the solution of climate change.

For example, AI could help with more accurate predictions of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, or the rate at which we can expect the world's polar ice and glaciers to melt. It could also help us better manage our energy infrastructure, such as power grids. (from Kirk Chang and Alina Vaduva, The Conversation, more at techxplore.com)

The phenomenon of weather changes represents one of the most urgent and complex problems of our time. Anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel burning, deforestation and intensive agriculture have significantly altered the balance of the Earth's climate system and caused unprecedented global warming and increases in greenhouse gas emissions. (ROBERT GIORDAN, more at tempoitalia.it)

The climate crisis represents a serious alarm for human health and for the entire ecosystem. According to The Lancet, an authoritative scientific journal in the field of medicine, climate change represents “ the greatest threat to global health of the 21st century ". Climate change-related projections indicate an increase in health risks related to catastrophic events, extreme climate events, water availability, food security, and the spread of vector-borne infectious diseases, contaminated water, and food. (Matteo Paolini, More at quifinanza.it)

Levels of important heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached historic highs last year and are rising at a near-record pace, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carbon dioxide, the most important and abundant of the human-caused greenhouse gases, rose in 2023 by the third-highest amount in 65 years of record-keeping, NOAA said Friday. Scientists are also concerned about the rapid rise in atmospheric levels of methane, a shorter-lived but more potent heat-trapping gas. Both have jumped by 5.5 % over the past decade.

The 2.8 parts per million increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from January 2023 to December was not as large as the spikes in 2014 and 2015, but it was larger than in any other year since accurate records began in 1959. The average carbon dioxide level in 2023 was 419.3 parts per million, 50 % higher than in pre-industrial times. (by Seth Borenstein, more at phys.org)

An analysis of all heat waves that occurred around the world between 1979 and 2020 found that they now last an average of 12 days, compared with 8 days at the start of the study. As the planet continues to warm, they will last even longer, says Wei Zhang of Utah State University. “Based on the trend, that could double to 16 days by around 2060,” he says. Zhang’s team found that heat waves are not only lasting much longer, but they are also more frequent and moving more slowly, meaning that specific locations are having to endure hot conditions more often and for longer periods of time. (Michael Le Page, more at newscientist.com)

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook the ground in New Jersey this morning, blowing up my group cabins. It's a bit unusual, but not unheard of, to experience earthquakes in this part of the country, and some may be wondering if this is another extreme event that will become more likely in a changing climate?

The answer is maybe, but no one knows yet.

In case you don't remember your 4th grade science, what we experience as an earthquake is usually the result of parts of the Earth's crust colliding, pulling apart, or sliding against each other. This movement is driven by changes occurring deep underground, far from the influence of surface temperatures or CO2 concentrations. (EMILY PONTECORVO, more at heatmap.news)

Shengping He and his team from the University of Bergen have revealed how the changing Arctic ice landscape is affecting winter temperatures around the world. The findings shed light on the complex relationship between ice, the ocean and climate change.

Warm Arctic, cold Eurasia

Scientists have been puzzled by a strange pattern for the past few decades. The Arctic is warming incredibly fast—about three to four times faster than the rest of the planet. But regions like East Asia are also experiencing unusually harsh winters. One prime suspect: shrinking Arctic sea ice.

Over the past four decades, we have lost 12.2 % of our summer sea ice every decade. It's tempting to connect the dots: less ice in the north, colder winters in the south. But is that the whole story? (Sanjana Gajbhiye, more at www.earth.com)

Permanent carbon removal refers to activities that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it safely and permanently for several centuries. Some examples:

• Direct Airborne Carbon Capture with Storage (DACCS)
• Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and other biomass-based methods (BioCCS),
• Chemical bond of CO ₂ took to products,
• and other technological solutions that lead to permanent storage.

The role of permanent carbon removal in the European Green Deal

In December 2021, the Commission presented a communication on sustainable carbon cycles, which proposes to remove 5 million tonnes of CO ₂ annually until 2030 through technological solutions. (More on climate.ec.europa.eu)

National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS), WMO and its partners, as well as in schools and academic institutions, celebrated in a big way the theme of World Meteorological Day 2024 "On the Frontline of Climate Action" . The celebration of the WMO Secretariat was held on March 21, as March 23 fell on a Saturday. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), a partner of the Early Warnings for All initiative, took this opportunity to launch the Weather Kids Campaign.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo addressed a full to overflowing room at her first World Met Day celebration at the WMO Secretariat. (More on wmo.int)

Over the past year, there has been an intense debate among scientists - and more broadly - about whether global warming is "accelerating". This in turn led to questions about whether the world was warming "faster than scientists expected". Here, Carbon Brief takes a closer look at the issue, finding that evidence for an acceleration in the pace of warming has been mounting over the past 15 years.

However, this acceleration is broadly consistent with projections from the latest generation of climate models and the recent Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). All expect the world to warm significantly faster in the current and future decades than the rate the world has experienced since 1970. (ZEKE HAUSFATHER, more at carbonbrief.org)

In recent decades, climate change has risen to the top of the political agenda of governments and international institutions. Growing emissions of greenhouse gases contribute to rising global temperatures with devastating consequences for the environment, biodiversity and human well-being. Carbon neutrality and climate neutrality are key concepts in the study and implementation of strategies to combat climate change.

Carbon neutrality expresses the balance between carbon emissions and absorption of emissions from natural carbon sinks. According to the official IPCC explanation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) carbon neutrality is achieved when anthropogenic  emissions of greenhouse gases are compensated by the same amount of emissions that will be reduced, prevent or sequester in a given time horizon. (More on biblus.acca.it)

In recent decades, we have witnessed rapid changes in the Arctic climate, with the rate of warming three to four times exceeding global averages. This mysterious "warm Arctic, cold Eurasia" climate phenomenon has profound implications and is fueling scientific curiosity about its underlying mechanisms. Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly, shrinking by about 12.2 % per decade in summer over the past 40 years. Earlier studies suggested that shrinking Arctic sea ice played a key role in driving the "Warm Arctic, Cold Eurasia" climate regime. However, limitations in available observations have raised questions about whether internal atmospheric variability may be masking the true impact of reduced sea ice. (according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, phys.org)